Oroville killer's grandson charged in Oregon homicide

CANBY, Ore. — A man charged with murder in what police say was a marijuana theft gone bad last weekend in Oregon, is the grandson of an Oroville man sitting on California's death row for two murders in 1981.

Francis Weaver, 31, is also the son of a man who avoided a death sentence by pleading guilty in 2004 to killing two Oregon girls.

Francis Weaver's grandfather, long-haul trucker Ward Weaver Jr., was convicted in 1985 and sentenced to death for the slayings of Air Force cadet Robert Don Radford, 18, of Edmonds, Wash., and his fiancé Barbara Ann Levoy, 23, of Aurora, Col.

A Kern County jury found Ward had attacked the pair after offering them help when their car broke down in the Mojave Desert on Feb. 5, 1981, according to articles published in this newspaper at the time.

Radford's body was found about five miles from the disabled vehicle, dead of massive blunt force wounds to the head. Levoy was not found at the time, and leads in the case dried up.

Then Weaver was convicted in 1982 in Ventura County for picking up a pair of hitchhikers in Oregon. The 18-year-old victim was shot and left for dead, while the 16-year-old girl was kidnapped and locked in a closet, except to be raped repeatedly. She was eventually released.

Weaver arrived at San Quentin Prison on a sentence of 42 years to life, and bragged to cellmates about the 1981 killings. He told them he kidnapped and raped Levoy, strangled her and buried her under a concrete slab under a deck in the back yard of his rented Middlehoff Lane home in Thermalito.

The word got to authorities, who dug up the slab and found Levoy's body. Weaver was taken to Kern County for trial, and convicted of double murder in December 1984. The following April he was sentenced to death, and he has been on death row ever since.

The Kern County district attorney at the time, Ron Shumaker, told The Oregonian newspaper in August 2002 (http://goo.gl/bBxckm) that Ward Weaver Jr.'s truck routes matched up with 26 unsolved hitchhiker homicides. He was never charged in those cases.

Ward Weaver Jr.'s son and Francis Weaver's father — Ward Weaver III — is also in prison for murder.

He was convicted of aggravated murder in 2004, two years after the bodies of Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis were found in his backyard. Before the discovery, the search for the 12-year-old Pond and 13-year-old Gaddis riveted Oregon for months and put the missing girls on the cover of People magazine.

It was Francis Weaver, then 19, who finally ended the mystery by calling emergency dispatchers to report his girlfriend accused Ward Weaver III of raping her, and his father had privately admitted to killing the girls.

In the most recent case, Canby, Ore., police say Francis Weaver and two co-conspirators sought to steal drugs last weekend from a Grants Pass man whose car contained 15 pounds of marijuana. The victim, 43-year-old Edward Spangler, was shot in the face and shoulder.

Weaver and the other men, Michael A. Orren, 27, and Shannon Bettencourt, 32, were arraigned Tuesday in an Oregon City court. A court clerk said they did not enter pleas and have yet to be assigned attorneys. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for next week.

The investigation began shortly before 5 a.m. Sunday when Canby police officers were called to a small park near the apartment where Shaw lives and Francis Weaver sometimes stays. Officers found Spangler's body next to a car that crashed into a tree.

Police documents obtained from the Clackamas County Jail said the men had been tracking Spangler for three hours in an attempt to steal the marijuana, with Weaver exchanging text messages with Orren. Minutes before the homicide, Orren was directed to a back parking lot at the apartment building, where he allegedly met Spangler.

A probable-cause statement written by detective Brett Ethington said Orren was identified as the shooter and the gun believed to be used in the killing has been recovered.

Additional documents from the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office show Weaver was arrested on an assault charge Jan. 25 and heroin was found in his pocket.

Maria Shaw, Francis Weaver's mother, said Wednesday her son is not the biological son of Ward Weaver III. Asked who is the father, she said it was either a now-deceased Marine named Richard or a man who was in the Navy named Christopher.

"I don't know which one of those two is the real dad," she said. "At the time, I was raped by Ward and I wanted revenge. I didn't want to be with Ward. I just wanted to get away from him."

Shaw, who eventually divorced Weaver in the 1990s, said her son had nothing to do with Spangler's death.

"He's not guilty," she said. "They want (to arrest) him so bad because they think he's Ward Weaver's son."